Marketing with a Cause; not just Vision

It's like a mandate that you are ought to have a vision before starting any venture. Not that I don't believe it but there is something much bigger, better or simply more important than that.

This story from Church of the Customer moved me deeply. Its about a small time upcoming shoe making company called TOMS Shoes. It was founded by Blake Mycoskie in 2006, a former contestant of "The Amazing Race" who got inspired by low-cost Alpargatas (espadrille-type shoes) during a trip to Argentina. His vision was to bring those shoes to US and give it a fashion makeover.

But something else also happend simultaneously. He decided to give a pair of shoes to those shoeless children in third-world countries for every pair sold in US. By far, he has sold about 2,00,000 shoes and donated equal number too. He also went ahead and struck a deal with Fashion Label Icon Ralph Lauren & retailers like Whole Foods too.

(Church of the Customer quotes) TOMS Shoes has buzz for a variety of reasons, which include:

• An uncommon product amidst of sea of commonality.
• A simple, yet inspiring story that's easy to tell and therefore spread.
• An accessible and well-spoken leader who'll tell the story to anyone who'll listen.
• A strong culture of participation among employees and customers that's ingrained into the DNA of the company.

Apart from all these there another dimension on which I started writing this post. Thinking about what sells in the marketplace; is it Blake Mycoskie's Entrepreneurial spirits or something which is deeper than that? I always believed that conviction of the entreprenuer is very important but not more than the CAUSE for which you are competing in the marketplace, which is much higher than your vision. Your cause shows you care; not only about profitability but the core entity of any business model i.e. Customers.

N.B. What do you think? Without Cause can a business model survive the test of time or it is just a by-product of Vision?

Community-led Business Model Monetization for Twitter

A VERY interesting & innovative approach by Len Kendall to solving Twitter's service woes (See the inset picture above). Could this be the future of "Community-led business model monetization?" (via Joseph Jaffe). After my last post on Twitter, I feel initiatives like these, though may not turn out to be money churners but surely is hinting towards a broader trend in the near future.

Social Media Simplified: CommonCraft does it again

Sachi and Lee LeFever of CommonCraft does it again with "Social Media in Plain English".

Oh, by the way, if your are still thinking what the hell is Social Media and why is media and people like us from the blogging fraternity are going bonkers (if I may say so), then definitely this 3:44 minute brilliant piece from CommonCraft will help you.



So go ahead, give yourself and your customers a chance to do something different because "EXPERIENCE IS THE NEW REALITY" and sure social media and its various tools (or I should say cheap yet effective) will come handy.

Till then enjoy this one and full marks to CommonCraft.

Related Posts:

• Video: Twitter Simplified
• RSS Simplified- How *RSS* can make your life easier

Amitabh Bachchan's blog: Marketing gimmick or serious cause?

I never thought that I will write anything about bollywood stars in this blog. But for the couple of weeks something is brewing offline as well as online which is quite interesting to talk about. India's mega superstar Amitabh Bachchan(BigB) has started his own blog which has been the center of attraction both in media as well as in film fraternity.

Though WatBlog has stated this move from Amitabh Bachchan as a marketing gimmick by BigAdda.com (Mr. Anil Ambani's Social Network) but what excited me was the more recent news from this front in ET that Amitabh Bachchan is paid a huge sum of Rs. 100 Crores ($25 million) to blog on BigAdda.com! I guess Mr. Arrington of TechCrunch fame who reportedly earns something around Rs 1 crore ($250000) per month may take some tips from Mr. Bachchan...Psst!

But whatever may be the scene out there, but Mr. Bachchan has justified to BigAdda.com since the amount of controversy it has generated has given the portal enough viral affect which has generated enough furore in offline media to catapult BigAdda.com into a superior visibility status.

Not only the viral impact has helped BigAdda.com but this sort of joint venture has helped Mr. Bachchan to put his much needed voice across his rivals subtly but also do much needed PR for BigAdda itself for free which they could have spend as direct expenses via advertising in television or print. So I believe that it's win-win situation for both these brands.

One more thing about his blog is that it's a big hit among his fans as there were 100's of comments which shows that his fans have taken his blogging step seriously. But the question is will Mr. Bachchan take blogging seriously like others such as Aamir Khan who has even hosted his blog at aamirkhan.com? Or he's going to use this voice-up platform to promote his future films.

P.S. The backdrop of his blog has a picture of Amitabh Bachchan in his next awaited release "Bhootnath".

Indian Motorbike goes Viral with "Pulsar Mania"

Now this is what I call biking is all about (though parental guidance is necessary). Still Bajaj Auto has done it, I must say. Tagged as "PulsarMania", the campaign demonstrates the Pulsar's power, aggression and grace in a never seen before manner. Shot in Cape Town, the stunt team comprises the best riders across the world including AC Farias (World No.2), Matte Griffin etc.



Though, the video is there in the television but it's the power of the viral that is turning heads. I would agree with WatBlog who thinks that it has the basic elements to be viral.

• The WOW Factor of putting the best bike riders of the world into a sleekly designed power machine (if I'm not going overboard).

• It’s got the shareable factor - Every Pulsar bike owner is going to love this video and is going to become a pulsarmania evangelist and it’s not only them, it’s a video which makes every biker feel special.

• The brand doesn’t shout at you at all - No bike specs, no mileage figures, no price. It’s for the spirit of biking and showcases Pulsar’s power, aggression and grace.

But one complain from my side. Why there is no dedicated site for this campaign? If they want it to be a secret viral thing then are those TV ads helping? Anyway, I just love the video.

Video Posted on: 6th March, 2008, about 40K+ hits in YouTube alone
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai
Creative Team: Abhijit Avasthi, Manoj Shetty, Rajneesh Ramakrishnan
Production House: Velocity Films, South Africa
Director: Lourens Van Rensburg
Music: Paul Norwood, Audio Militia

Demystifying Influencers: From Pyramid to Diamond Model

CNET Networks conducted a three-part study called "Understanding Influence, and making it work for you" (Download here). It explored the structure of social networks, methods of acquiring information and the motivations for giving/sharing/influencing others. Guy Kawasaki explains the basic tenets of the study in his blog post.

But what I was interested in is the marketing or advertising takeaways from the white paper.

The study provides three key marketing takeaways:

1. Two unique characteristics of information that influencers value are that the information is unique and trusted.
   

2. Shape your marketing messages for the larger network of moderately connected users, not just the few highly connected individuals at the top.
   

3. Make content actionable for users.
   

But these theories may have some loophole. For instance, a meme originating in Facebook may or may not catch and have a world wide reach. But it may catch on in particular group and spread to other similar groups by virtue of the fact that a highly connected individual in a group on Facebook is also in a group of like minded individuals on MySpace.

So in a niche group context, the meme will spread. If enough niche groups catch on and the meme has a wide enough appeal it is likely to take of on a grander scale.

This can only occur if you have a large number of highly connected individuals in a niche. Without highly connected individuals there would be no way to connect outside of the specific niche group with other groups.

I would suggest that a highly connected individual must also be a highly active group member that also has a high degree of credibility within a group in order for a meme to spread (thanks to one of the commenter).

Other than this in country like India, there is a high chance that this theory may not be put into practice as such since demographics is widely varied, so different customers will consume the same product in different ways.

Note: In case, the pdf downloading plays crazy with your mind, shoot me a mail at sampad.s@gmail.com. I will send a fresh copy of the white paper ASAP.

Mozilla launches Viral Campaign against IE

Mozilla launched a viral campaign secretly supporting Firefox with the name "Fight Against Boredom" targetting Internet Explorer (IE) (According to TC). Apparently, the message is "Don't use IE, instead use Firefox". The message is in the form of a song with statistics which I can't help but its damn funny. I hope Microsoft takes it in the best spirits. Even there is a fake blog supporting the viral campaign.



Even I'm posting this on my firefox app, so my thumbs-up for them!!

Some spoof about viral marketing

While checking out some of the most famous viral campaigns, I found one of the most interesting snippet. Though FutureLab has covered the topic taking insights of Todd's campaign on "We didn't start the viral", but for me I have a bit different take on it.

First of all, one question that came into my mind is that does a company or an individual have to try to make it viral? Or it is vested in the hands of the target customers who somehow engage themselves to the viral message. Now for me I think that the latter one is more true than the former.

Sometimes it may happen that the viral message may get lost in between because of target customers may not be the key influencers. So what do we do about it? Three things should always be kept in mind while spreading the message.

1. Make your campaign more engagement oriented to increase (if not manifold) the "customer engagement dimension" (CED).
2. The good old "Delight & Excite Strategy" in the viral campaign.
3. "Easing the spread of word" medium for better viral.